Major Monsoon

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Max and I have now experienced two of Arizona's infamous Monsoon seasons (June-September-ish). I say "infamous" but really what we've experienced is this: a few nights a month, clouds will roll in, thunder and lightning will strike, and a nice rain will fall. The whole time it's still really, really hot (it reaches the 100 teens in temperature here on a regular basis during those months). The Monsoons almost happen exclusively at night (once in a while they will hit in the late afternoon) and by morning the storm has passed and once again the sky is blue. It's actually pretty neat to experience real (loud) thunder (California's doesn't compare) and the lightning can be just beautiful. If the timing is right, Max and I like to sit chairs outside underneath the patio overhang and just listen to the rain. We've done this at both houses (remember it's not cold during these storms - we're still wearing shorts while we sit in our chairs : )

This past week, all I have experienced was thrown out the window when we witnessed the biggest Arizona storm thus far (for us anyway). The storm hit Max first, who was out grabbing lunch. He phoned me from his car to say that it was hailing. Yes, hail. Ice. Impossible, I thought. I was wearing a skirt and a tank top - it couldn't be hailing 20 minutes away (he put the phone on speaker and I could hear it pelting his car).

The storm finally reached me late afternoon while I was driving home (still wearing a skirt and tank top). Driving while it's raining in Scottsdale can be tricky because the roads pretty much flood right away. I suppose since it's the desert, there's really no need to put in drainage except for the fact that when it does rain, it's super scary to be a driver. All of a sudden, I realized that the rain had turned to hail and I literally couldn't see more then a couple feet in front of my car. It was one of those moments where you have to debate pulling over and risking being hit by another car, or just going really, really slow (which is what I chose). I came home to this:

And true to form, by daybreak the next day, the storm was gone and the sky was blue. As I was driving out the driveway, however, I saw that we had a little reminder from Mr. Monsoon:

Yes, the water was so strong, it moved a whole pile of dirt and rocks right to the middle of our driveway! Going through the neighborhood, we weren't the only ones who experienced this. Even our street had random patches of dirt and branches. The Monsoons have now earned their infamous status (at least in my eyes).